Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

On the Origin of the N400 Effects: An ERP Waveform and Source Localization Analysis in Three Matching Tasks

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Brain Topography Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The question of the cognitive nature and the cerebral origins of the event-related potential (ERP) N400 component has frequently been debated. Here, the N400 effects were analyzed in three tasks. In the semantic task, subjects decided whether sequentially presented word pairs were semantically related or unrelated. In the phonologic (rhyme detection) task, they decided if words were phonologically related or not. In the image categorization task, they decided whether images were categorically related or not. Difference waves between ERPs to unrelated and related conditions (defined here as the N400 effect) demonstrated a greater amplitude and an earlier peak latency effect in the image than in semantic and phonologic tasks. In contrast, spatial correlation analysis revealed that the maps computed during the peak of the N400 effects were highly correlated. Source localization computed from these maps showed the involvement in all tasks of the middle/superior temporal gyrus. Our results suggest that these qualitatively similar N400 effects index the same cognitive content despite differences in the representational formats (words vs. images) and the types of mismatch (semantic vs. phonological) across tasks.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Barrett SE, Rugg MD (1989) Event-related potentials and the semantic matching of faces. Neuropsychologia 27:913–922

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett SE, Rugg MD (1990a) Event-related potentials and the phonological matching of picture names. Brain Lang 38:424–437

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Barrett SE, Rugg MD (1990b) Event-related potentials and the semantic matching of pictures. Brain Cogn 14:201–212

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Bentin S, McCarthy G, Wood CC (1985) Event-related potentials, lexical decision and semantic priming. Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol 60:343–355

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Brandeis D, Naylor H, Halliday R, Callaway E, Yano L (1992) Scopolamine effects on visual information processing, attention and event-related potential map latencies. Psychophysiology 29:315–336

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Brandeis D, Lehmann D, Michel CM, Mingrone W (1995) Mapping event-related brain potential microstates to sentence endings. Brain Topogr 8:145–159

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Brown CM, Hagoort P (1993) The processing nature of the N400: evidence from masked priming. J Cogn Neurosci 5:34–44

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Content A, Mousty P, Radeau M (1990) Brulex: Une base de données lexicales informatisée pour le français écrit et parlé. L’année Psychologique 90:551–566

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ganis G, Kutas M, Sereno MI (1996) The search for “common sense”: an electrophysiological study of the comprehension of words and pictures in reading. J Cogn Neurosci 8:89–106

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Grave de Peralta Menedez R, Gonzalez Andino S, Lantz G, Michel CM, Landis T (2001) Noninvasive localization of electromagnetic epileptic activity. I. Method descriptions and simulations. Brain Topogr 14:131–137

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hagoort P (2008) The fractionation of spoken language understanding by measuring electrical and magnetic brain signals. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 363:1055–1069

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Holcomb PJ (1993) Semantic priming and stimulus degradation: implications for the role of the N400 in language processing. Psychophysiology 30:47–61

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Holcomb PJ, Grainger J (2007) Exploring the temporal dynamics of visual word recognition in the masked repetition priming paradigm using event-related potentials. Brain Res 1180:39–58

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Khateb A, Annoni JM, Landis T, Pegna AJ, Custodi MC, Fonteneau E et al (1999) Spatio-temporal analysis of electric brain activity during semantic and phonological word processing. Int J Psychophysiol 32:215–231

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Khateb A, Michel CM, Pegna AJ, O’Dochartaigh SD, Landis T, Annoni JM (2003) Processing of semantic categorical and associative relations: an ERP mapping study. Int J Psychophysiol 49:41–55

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Khateb A, Pegna AJ, Landis T, Michel CM, Brunet D, Seghier ML et al (2007) Rhyme processing in the brain: an ERP mapping study. Int J Psychophysiol 63:240–250

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kondakor I, Pascual-Marqui RD, Michel CM, Lehmann D (1995) Event-related potential map differences depend on the prestimulus microstates. J Med Eng Technol 19:66–69

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kramer AF, Donchin E (1987) Brain potentials as indices of orthographic and phonological interaction during word matching. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 13:76–86

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kutas M, Federmeier KD (2000) Electrophysiology reveals semantic memory use in language comprehension. Trends Cogn Sci 4:463–470

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kutas M, Hillyard SA (1980) Reading senseless sentences: brain potentials reflect semantic incongruity. Science 207:203–205

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kutas M, Hillyard SA (1982) The lateral distribution of event-related potentials during sentence processing. Neuropsychologia 20:579–590

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lau EF, Phillips C, Poeppel D (2008) A cortical network for semantics: (de)constructing the N400. Nat Rev Neurosci 9:920–933

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Martin CD, Thierry G (2008) Interplay of orthography and semantics in reading: an event-related potential study. Neuroreport 19:1501–1505

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Moreno EM, Kutas M (2005) Processing semantic anomalies in two languages: an electrophysiological exploration in both languages of Spanish-English bilinguals. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res 22:205–220

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Munte TF, Brack M, Grootheer O, Wieringa BM, Matzke M, Johannes S (1998) Brain potentials reveal the timing of face identity and expression judgments. Neurosci Res 30:25–34

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Murray MM, Brunet D, Michel CM (2008) Topographic ERP analyses: a step-by-step tutorial review. Brain Topogr 20:249–264

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nigam A, Hoffman JE, Simons RF (1992) N400 to semantically anomalous pictures and words. J Cogn Neurosci 4:15–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perez-Abalo MC, Rodriguez R, Bobes MA, Gutierrez J, Valdes-Sosa M (1994) Brain potentials and the availability of semantic and phonological codes over time. Neuroreport 5:2173–2177

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Perrin F, Pernier J, Bertrand O, Echallier JF (1989) Spherical splines for scalp potential and current density mapping. Electroencephalogr Clin Neurophysiol 72:184–187

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ritter W, Simson R, Vaughan HG Jr (1983) Event-related potential correlates of two stages of information processing in physical and semantic discrimination tasks. Psychophysiology 20:168–179

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rodriguez-Fornells A, Munte TF, Clahsen H (2002) Morphological priming in Spanish verb forms: an ERP repetition priming study. J Cogn Neurosci 14:443–454

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rugg MD (1984a) Event-related potentials and the phonological processing of words and non-words. Neuropsychologia 22:435–443

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rugg MD (1984b) Event-related potentials in phonological matching tasks. Brain Lang 23:225–240

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rugg MD (1985) The effects of semantic priming and work repetition on event-related potentials. Psychophysiology 22:642–647

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rugg MD, Coles MGH (1995) The ERP and cognitive psychology: conceptual issues. In: Rugg MD, Coles MGH (eds) Electrophysiology of Mind - Event Related Potentials and Cognition. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 27–39

    Google Scholar 

  • Snodgrass JG, Vanderwart M (1980) A standardized set of 260 pictures: norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity and visual complexity. J Exp Psychol 6:174–215

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Szucs D, Soltesz F, Czigler I, Csepe V (2007) Electroencephalography effects to semantic and non-semantic mismatch in properties of visually presented single-characters: the N2b and the N400. Neurosci Lett 412:18–23

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • van den Brink D, Brown CM, Hagoort P (2001) Electrophysiological evidence for early contextual influences during spoken-word recognition: N200 versus N400 effects. J Cogn Neurosci 13:967–985

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Willems RM, Ozyurek A, Hagoort P (2008) Seeing and hearing meaning: ERP and fMRI evidence of word versus picture integration into a sentence context. J Cogn Neurosci 20:1235–1249

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation grants no’ 325100-118362 and 320030-125196, and the EEG Brain Mapping Core of the Center for Biomedical Imaging (CIBM) of Geneva and Lausanne. We thank Drs Rolando Grave de Peralta Menedez and Sara Gonzales Andino for the inverse solutions, and Tatiana Aboulafia for her contribution to the analysis of part of the data.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities and the Department of Learning Disabilities, Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa, 31905, Israel

    Asaid Khateb

  2. Laboratory of Experimental Neuropsychology and the Neuropsychology Unit, Department of Neurology, University Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland

    Asaid Khateb, Alan J. Pegna, Michaël S. Mouthon & Jean-Marie Annoni

  3. Department of Neurology, University Hospitals and Faculty of Medicine, Geneva, Switzerland

    Theodor Landis & Jean-Marie Annoni

Authors
  1. Asaid Khateb
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Alan J. Pegna
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Theodor Landis
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Michaël S. Mouthon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Jean-Marie Annoni
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Asaid Khateb.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (TIFF 1654 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Khateb, A., Pegna, A.J., Landis, T. et al. On the Origin of the N400 Effects: An ERP Waveform and Source Localization Analysis in Three Matching Tasks. Brain Topogr 23, 311–320 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-010-0149-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10548-010-0149-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation